When Tylar Drake was seventeen she decided to write a fiction novel. She convinced her parents to let her take her senior year of high school by correspondence, so she could have more free time to concentrate on her writing. The book entitled; Her Ghost, over the years, was reworked for different publishers and grant programs and ended up becoming the first novel of a planned mystery/suspense series. Though all prospective interest fell through at the last possible moments a new project was born called The Other Side: The Bleeding Door. Over the last year, after coming in contact with a film producer in Philadelphia, she was convinced to ditch the book and turn it into a series for television, which is currently being considered by HBO.

Currently Drake is researching her next project a thriller about the most horrifying thing that could ever happened to a human being.

Thanks to Tylar for being my first guest blogger!

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From: Tylar Drake

I want to start by thanking Rebecca for having me on as a guest blogger. I think this might be quite interesting.

So at the beginning of August I was watching an episode of Dateline, trying my best to sort through a terrible case of writers block. I’d been working on this new project for months with no forward movement, when they aired a story about an uncle who got a phone call from his niece in the Philippines asking for him to come and get her. See full story here.

So now you say. Well so what!?! It happened to a girl thousands of miles away, poor and desperate to make something better for herself and her family. But imagine this dirty ghetto in the Philippines. You are the young woman walking home from school, dreaming of a better life, a life where you can attain your dreams of modeling and acting and where you can perhaps make some money for your family. Suddenly you are stopped by a beautiful woman who asks you if you’ve ever modeled. Your smile brightens. She gives you a business card. From there she asks to move, where you will attend a modeling and acting school, where all of your needs will be taken care of, only thing is you need to sign a contract saying that you will eventually repay off expenses once you begin working.

Now imagine that you’re an upper middle class, educated, white American girl with the same dream. You sign the contract. You board a plane and fly out of the country towards the promise of achieving success and fame. You have just been trafficked.
This is the misconception that allows these piranhas to kidnap and prostitute young women and men all over the world, that it only happens to people who are naïve and uneducated. But look at the stats, last year alone nearly a million people were trafficked world wide, 17, 500 of those crossed through American borders.

As a people where have we failed each other to allow individuals to get away with selling another for money, whether it be the sex trade or the labor trade? What would you do if someone you knew was taken with false promises and forced into a life of slavery? Would you not do anything in your power to get them back? Why as fellow human beings have we decided that this problem is not our problem unless it affects us personally? Isn’t a life, any life, worth saving?